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Backgammon Problem #335
Analyzed by Walter Trice in the May Point |
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Tournament double match-point.
BLACK TO PLAY 6-3. |
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| A player who gets Problem 335 right over the board, assuming his decision amounts to more than a lucky guess, will undoubtedly have based his decision on experience and well-honed intuition, or on having in the past seen rollout results for a very similar position. I regard the problem as virtually unsolvable by mental calculation from first principles and common knowledge. Just to determine how frequently Black ultimately gets hit after the various candidates calls for counting a huge number of sequences, looking ahead five rolls or more. I could fill this entire newsletter with lists of rolls and tables of probabilities that no one would read, still needing to fill in a few blanks with guesstimates in order to present an argument in favor of my preferred play. But that would be (pardon me) Pointless . . . |
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